Hands
by jeeno2
Summary: Even after years with Arya, Gendry still feels self-conscious about their class differences. Arya is determined to help him overcome it. Modern day AU.


_a/n: I began this one-shot for the "Modern Day AU" prompt on tumblr's gameofships "Golden Ships" challenge a few weeks ago. But I ran out of time to submit it for that. I finally finished it this week and hope you enjoy._

* * *

Gendry has incredible hands.

Arya likes to study them when she thinks he's not looking. Over breakfast sometimes. While they're watching TV. Sometimes even when they're just driving together in his truck.

Over the years Arya has committed to memory the callouses on his palms and on his thumbs, as well as the scar that runs down the center of his right palm. She's come to love them all, just as she loves the traces of engine grease under his fingernails from his work at the garage that never seem to quite come out, no matter how hard he scrubs.

Gendry's hands are just so different from the hands of anyone Arya's ever met before. And she finds them endlessly fascinating. His hands are strong, with thick, long, dexterous fingers. Arya is convinced that his capable, expressive hands can do just about anything.

Just like Gendry can do anything.

But Arya also knows that Gendry's hands embarrass him when they're around certain people. He feels they set him apart when they hang out with her friends from college, most of whom have gone on to do graduate work in boring things like law or business.

Or when they're with her kind, but very wealthy, family on the north side of town.

Whenever they have dinner at her parents' house, Gendry – usually a fairly talkative, if not exactly upbeat, guy – is silent most of the night. He's always very polite to Arya's parents but he says little, sitting quietly at the table while Arya's family laughs and talks together.

He tries to hide his unease around the wealthy Starks – Arya knows he really does try – but he's never been good at hiding his emotions, and his self-consciousness is etched plainly on his face every time.

When Arya asks him what the matter is afterwards, as they drive his truck back home to their downtown apartment, her small hand engulfed within his much larger one on the gearshift between them, Gendry usually shrugs and replies with some variant of "I just didn't have anything to say." Which Arya knows is a lie.

But she always lets it go.

Gendry's self-consciousness is at its worst when they get together with Arya's older sister, Sansa. Sansa's husband, Willas Tyrell, is a neurosurgeon at the teaching hospital with hands as smooth and silky as white porcelain. Whenever she and Gendry have dinner with them, Gendry usually spends the entire evening with his own working man's hands hidden, stuffed deep in his pockets.

Arya wishes Gendry could see that he doesn't have anything to prove. To these people, or to anyone else. It bothers her more than she lets on that he still doesn't realize that he's just as good as they are – that she loves him more than anyone in the world – even after all this time.

* * *

They met years ago, when she was only eleven years old and Gendry was fifteen.

They grew up on different sides of the same small town and went to the same schools their whole lives. But it wasn't until the day a group of older bullies appeared out of nowhere and surrounded them, as Arya and Gendry were each minding their own business next to each other on the bench in front of their school, that they actually spoke to each other for the first time.

As the older boys started circling their bench, menacingly, Gendry jumped to his feet, hands in front of him, clenched into fists. Like he'd been dealing with boys like this his entire life and knew exactly how to handle the situation.

Arya wasn't used to fighting strangers, but she did have older brothers. She knew a thing or two about fist-fighting. While Gendry was posturing and dancing around, daring the leader of the gang to back up his threats with action, Arya got right to business, punching one of the smaller boys right on the nose, _hard,_ just like that.

"Fuck you, you little _bitch_!" the boy cried out, blood gushing from his newly broken nose, hands covering his face.

The bullies ran off after that without even a glance behind them.

Once they were gone, Gendry turned to look at her in amazement. She'd been a tiny, skinny little thing back then. Arya looked him over and noticed that the top of her head didn't quite reach his shoulder. Their big size difference seemed funny to her at the time.

"How did you do that?" he'd asked her, in awe.

"Do what?" Arya asked bluntly, legitimately confused. "Punch that kid?"

Gendry nodded, wide-eyed.

"Well, it was easy. I just went like this," she said, balling her right hand into a fist and throwing it at an invisible target in front of her.

He'd laughed at that, but he still sounded amazed. "That boy had a good six inches on you. You have balls of steel." He shook his head, smiling.

And then suddenly his smile was gone. He looked stricken as he said, "I mean. Oh – Jesus, I'm sorry." He sounded chagrined and began rubbing the back of his neck anxiously.

"Sorry for what?" she asked him, confused again.

"I mean… you're just a kid. A _girl_." He looked at her and glanced away quickly again, swallowing hard. "Boys shouldn't say stuff like that around you."

Arya laughed at him.

"I have four brothers," she said, still laughing. "I've fucking heard it all."

Gendry's eyes snapped to hers, wide with surprise.

He started laughing too, then, color beginning to stain his cheeks.

"What's your name?" she'd asked him. "I like to know the names of people I beat other people up with."

Gendry snorted. "Yeah, right. I don't think I contributed much." He ran his hands through his dark hair and then extended his right one out for her. She took his hand and shook it. He'd had calluses on his palm even then, she remembers. And a very firm handshake. "I'm Gendry. Gendry Waters."

"I'm Arya Stark," she'd said in response.

Gendry blanched and yanked back his hand. "Stark? As in…"

Arya sighed. "Yes. Stark," she confirmed. She got this reaction a lot when she introduced herself to people during her childhood. She hated it. "And y_es_, I'm Mayor Stark's daughter."

Gendry stuffed both of his hands into his pockets and nodded.

"Well," he said, stiffly. He cleared his throat. "It was very nice to meet you… Miss Stark."

Arya rolled her eyes.

"If you call me 'Miss Stark' one more time, Gendry Waters, I'm going to punch _you_." She couldn't help that her father was an elected official, and she couldn't stand it when people treated her differently because of it.

"All right," Gendry said, but he still looked nervous. "Arya."

"That's better," Arya said, nodding. "Anyway, I gotta go home now, Gendry. I'll see you around?"

Gendry nodded non-committally, still looking a bit shaken. "Yeah. See you, Miss… I mean, Arya."

She stuck her tongue out at him, turned on her heels and started for home.

* * *

They sought each other out after that.

Not every day. After all, she was four years younger than him, and they each had their own friends.

But it didn't take long for them to realize that despite their obvious differences, they actually had a lot in common. They both enjoyed sports – both playing and watching – and they could talk about baseball for what felt like hours.

And their senses of humor meshed perfectly.

Their tempers, for better or worse, meshed perfectly as well. Arya soon realized that Gendry frequently got into fights with other boys after school, usually starting from arguments over nothing that escalated quickly. On more than one occasion Arya appeared out of nowhere to help him. Her small size always caught the other boys off-guard, and she quickly proved a very useful backup.

"You know, you're really good in a fight," Gendry remarked after one particularly dramatic battle in the school parking lot, panting a little and wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. "I mean, for a…"

"Girl?" she finished for him, one eyebrow raised.

He grinned sheepishly at her and ducked his head. He nodded.

* * *

By the beginning of the following school year, if they happened to bump into each other at the end of the day, they'd sometimes walk home together – at least until it was time for him to turn right, towards his after school job at the mechanic's shop, while she turned left towards her home.

At that fork in the road she'd always wave goodbye to him, smiling. And Gendry would wave back, smiling as well. But his smile always looked forced. His shoulders would be slumped, as if he were more resigned to where he was heading after school than excited about it. His mop of messy black hair hung in front of his face like he was trying to hide behind it, and his smile never reached his bright blue eyes.

As Arya trudged the rest of the way home by herself, she'd always get upset. Gendry couldn't help that his foster family didn't have the same kind of money her family did. And there was no shame in hard work.

He took her to his shop once, even though he clearly didn't want to – but she'd begged and pleaded that day, refusing to take no for an answer. As she watched him work, she saw firsthand that Gendry could fix things with his very own hands that most people would likely just give up on and throw away.

She felt Gendry should be _proud_ of what he could already do at sixteen. Nobody else she knew could do the things he could – build a car out of nothing but spare parts and engine grease; rewire electrical fixtures with nothing but a pair of pliers and his bare hands – and she really admired him for it.

Every single time Gendry turned away from her to go to his after school job, embarrassment written all over him, Arya wanted to tell him how talented he was. But at twelve, she didn't have the right words.

On those days she'd take out her frustration by yelling at Sansa over dinner. It always made her parents angry but it helped her feel a little better.

* * *

By the time Arya was fourteen, she and Gendry started doing homework together.

Despite the fact that he was eighteen, Gendry had a lot of trouble with reading. "Dyslexic," he sheepishly admitted to her one day, his face turning red as he leafed self-consciously through an old copy of _1984_ they were reading together. "And, um… well, my foster parents didn't think to have me tested until last year."

He was clearly embarrassed to be doing his English homework with someone so much younger than him, but he was failing the class and obviously needed her help.

And so she did what she could to make the situation as comfortable as possible for him. Gendry was more than capable in math, and she happily let him help her with her geometry homework in exchange for her going over the reading work seniors were expected to do in remedial English. He seemed grateful for the opportunity to return the favor.

"If only more things could be figured out through numbers and… and… stuff like that," he mused one day as she chewed her bottom lip over a particularly challenging set of geometry proofs. "Everything would be a lot easier."

Arya covered his hand with hers and gave it a squeeze, in commiseration and sympathy, because she knew how hard he struggled in school. But he froze at the touch of her hand, and she immediately withdrew it.

* * *

It wasn't until more than three years later, Arya resting her head in Gendry's lap inside his beat-up pickup truck in front of Westeros High School's gymnasium, in her blue strapless dress that matched his eyes, her bare arms covered in gooseflesh despite the warmth of the May evening, that he kissed her.

One moment they'd been talking and laughing together. Making fun of Westeros High's assistant principal who they agreed must have looked seventy years old even when he was a teenager. Laughing at the bitchy cunts from the Casterly Rock subdivision, with their ugly dresses that must have cost two thousand dollars, their dyed blonde hair, and their plastic smiles.

And then the next moment they weren't saying anything at all. Gendry looked nervously at the dashboard and cracked his knuckles. In the gloom of his truck it looked to Arya like he might be blushing a little.

And then he swallowed hard and looked directly into her eyes. The look she saw there caused her heart to stutter in her chest.

He drew his bottom lip between his teeth, then, not dropping her gaze. And he gently cradled the back of her head in his strong hands.

"Arya…" he breathed, almost inaudibly. He grinned at her, looking nervous and not a little feverish.

She had no experience in this sort of thing but she was fairly certain she knew what came next.

And she had no intention of fighting it.

She instinctively wound her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her at the same time he leaned forward and gently pressed his lips to hers.

It was a slow kiss, and very tentative. Arya knew that Gendry knew how to do this – he was a lot older than her, for one thing, and she knew he'd had girlfriends since graduating from Westeros High. Even so, he didn't rush the kiss. He moved one of his arms from the back of her head and began slowly running it up and down her side, making her shiver, and gently traced her bottom lip with his tongue. But he didn't push, and even when she opened her mouth a little for him he kept himself in check, as if he were handling a delicate object that might shatter into pieces at the slightest wrong movement.

Despite the sluggish pace Gendry was setting – or perhaps because of it – Arya's limbs; her skin; her entire being felt absolutely alight with anticipation.

At length he took his lips away from hers and touched them gently to her chin. He pressed slow, lazy kisses along her jaw it until he reached her ear.

"Are you sure you want this?" he whispered into her ear. His breath tickled the small wispy hairs on the back of her neck, making her shudder.

"Wh-what do you mean?"

He pulled away from her and looked her in the eye again. He began caressing her hair, causing some of it to tumble out of the carefully arranged knot Sansa had piled on top of her head earlier tonight. But Arya didn't care about that. "I mean… you know what I am, Arya. I'm not going to college. I can't afford it. And I don't have much money…."

_Ah._

"God_damn_it Gendry," she shouted. "None of that means jack shit to me. And it never has," she'd said emphatically. She punched his shoulder because he was a stupid idiot. It was a pretty hard punch, but she could tell he was fighting a smile.

"I like you because of who you are. I couldn't care less about who you aren't_._" She huffed in frustration. "I asked you to the prom because, yes. I want this. I want _you_."

When an awkward silence fell between them after her speech, Arya decided to take a chance.

His eyes were still downcast, but Arya licked her lips and steeled her nerves. She'd never done this before, but that didn't matter. Not with Gendry. She took the initiative this time and roughly pulled him down to her, and pressed her lips to his, mimicking what he'd done just a moment before.

If Gendry was shocked by her actions he recovered very quickly. He began kissing her back almost immediately, in earnest this time, wrapping his arms around her small frame and pulling her close. His body was radiating heat, and it matched the fire pumping through her veins.

She thought, fleetingly, that this was a hell of a lot more fun than she'd expected prom to be.

* * *

Two months after that, Arya gave Gendry her virginity.

It happened the night she moved into her new apartment near the University of Westeros. Her father had wanted to help her move in at first, but she knew being around her parents made Gendry uncomfortable.

Fortunately, it hadn't been difficult to convince Ned Stark that between the two of them, she and Gendry had it covered.

"He's really strong, Dad," she'd assured him over dinner the night before she moved out. Her brother Robb's fists were clenching at his sides as she spoke about Gendry, but her father was listening attentively and Arya never gave two shits about what Robb thought.

"All his work at the mechanic's shop – I mean, you know." She gestured vaguely with her hands. "He's strong."

In truth, Gendry did almost _all_ of the lifting that day, while Arya did little more than tell him where her chair, her small desk, and her narrow bed were supposed to go. As Gendry moved, his arms straining against the weight of her furniture, the tendons and veins in his muscular arms popped out in sharp relief. It didn't take long for a drop of sweat to bead up and then trickle down Gendry's forehead, and Arya was almost overpowered with the crazy urge to trace it with her tongue, despite the fact that Gendry was in the middle of moving in all her shit and probably wouldn't have wanted to be distracted like that right then.

The moment Gendry sat down on the bed in Arya's new room, however, clearly utterly spent after the day's heavy exertion, Arya straddled his lap and began attacking his neck with kisses.

He'd half-heartedly tried to stop her, mumbling a series of half-excuses.

"I'm so gross right now, Arya – I'm covered in sweat…" he said weakly. Like she really cared about that. She kept at it, swirling her tongue around the sensitive spot where his neck joined his shoulder that she learned, just last week, made his eyes roll back into his head if she did it just right.

He rewarded her with a small whimper, and she smiled against his skin.

"I have work tomorrow…" he mumbled as she continued her ministrations.

But even as the excuses were leaving his lips, his hands were tugging at the hem of her shirt, and as she shimmied out of it he helped lift it over her head.

A good deal of time later – when they were kissing each other feverishly with lips, teeth, and tongues, his hands gently massaging her bare breasts, her own hands fumbling stupidly with his belt buckle– he stopped her again, panting, insisting that she be _sure_ before they went any further_._

She reached between their bodies without a word and palmed him through the front of his jeans, squeezing gently. He closed his eyes tightly and groaned. He leaned his forehead against hers, helpless.

"I'm sure," she whispered.

When he entered her for the first time, and he told her that he loved her, she urged him to keep going with a press of her hips, her hands scrabbling for purchase against the broad expanse of his back.

And he did.

* * *

Arya glances up at the clock over their front mantel. It's almost six o'clock, which means Gendry should be home from work any minute now.

She grabs her phone from the kitchen counter and re-reads the text she got from Sansa last week, double-checking the time they're supposed to be at the Tyrells' tonight. They still have over an hour to get ready, which is good. She wants to wear that slinky red dress she got last week that Gendry can't take his eyes off of and it needs ironing.

Just as Arya's pulling out the ironing board from the hall closet, Gendry opens the door to their apartment and walks inside. He heads over to the fridge, grabs a beer from the top shelf, and sits down on their sofa.

"How was your day?" he asks, leaning back against the cushions and running both hands over his face. He looks tired, Arya muses.

"Fine," she says. She leaves the ironing board and sits down on one of the stools in their small galley kitchen. "One of our morning clients showed up an hour late, which fucked up the rest of the day. But you know; it's Friday." She shrugs.

"And thank the Seven for that," Gendry exhales, taking a large swig of his beer. He smiles at her tiredly and pats the spot on the sofa next to him, wordlessly asking her to join him. She obliges, moving quickly to his side. She sits down by him, tucking her short legs underneath her body and resting her head on his shoulder. Even after all these years he's still more than a head taller than her and much bigger. He easily wraps both of his arms around her.

"Are you gonna be ready to go at seven-fifteen?" she murmurs, kissing his cheek. He didn't shave this morning and his cheek is stubbled. It feels rough against Arya's lips. She kisses his cheek again, and then a third time, enjoying the scratchy sensation.

She makes a mental note to tell him to shave less often in the future.

He kisses the top of her head and takes another pull from his beer bottle. "Seven-fifteen?" he asks absently. "What's at seven-fifteen?"

She sits up a little and turns his head with her hands so he's facing her. "We're having dinner with Sansa and the Tyrells at seven-thirty tonight. Remember?"

Gendry's face falls. He rubs his chin with the back of one hand and puts his beer down on the floor by his feet.

"_All_ the Tyrells?" he asks, a little weakly.

Arya nods. "You remember, right? Margaery and her brothers are throwing a big dinner party. Sansa's the co-hostess. We've been talking about this for weeks." She pushes his shoulder playfully. "C'mon, Gendry. You remember."

Gendry nods. "Yeah, I guess. I remember," he admits. But there's a grim, familiar edge in his voice that Arya doesn't like at all. "I'll just… um. I'll just go get cleaned up first?"

He looks down at his dirty work pants and his hands and sighs quietly. He moves to get up off the sofa.

Something inside Arya snaps at the worn look on his face. The look she's seen there hundreds of times before. The first time she introduced herself to him as Arya Stark. When they were teenagers and she asked him to show her where he worked. And now, as adults, whenever they spend time with certain of her friends and family.

He just can't go on like this, thinking he's not good enough for these people. _She_ can't go on with him thinking that. It's been too many years of this, and she's had enough.

It occurs to her, suddenly, that she might have a way to fix it. It might be crazy – it sounds more than a little crazy in her own head – but she's tried absolutely everything else to get through to him.

Steeling her nerves, she grabs his wrist and forcefully yanks him back down onto the sofa.

"Hey!" he shouts, as the back of his head hits the sofa cushions. "What…?"

Before she can talk herself out of doing it Arya straddles his lap and pulls off her t-shirt.

"Hey," Gendry says again happily, though clearly very surprised. They've lived together for more than four years now. This sort of spontaneity has long since become a thing of the past.

But he doesn't seem to mind. Just the opposite, in fact. As she undoes the front clasp of her lacy pink bra and her small breasts spill free, Arya can feel the evidence of his arousal already starting to grow underneath her.

Her unexpected actions may have caught Gendry by surprise but he catches up quickly. He rips his own t-shirt over his head in one fluid movement and leans forward, crushing her to him, and captures her mouth in a fiery kiss that belies his exhaustion from the workday.

As Gendry kisses her, his tongue demanding entrance, and Arya eagerly granting it, his hands ghost up her sides until he gently catches her dusky pink nipples between his fingertips. He rolls them a little and Arya arches back from him, gasping in pleasure.

Gendry is very, very good at this. He's had years of practice loving her body and he knows exactly what she likes.

But her own pleasure isn't what she has in mind right now.

With difficulty, Arya pulls his hands from her. Gendry looks confused, but Arya soldiers on, pushing firmly on his shoulders until he's leaning back against the sofa cushions again. He's breathing heavily now – playing with her breasts always gets him at least as turned on as it gets her – and underneath her she can feel his cock straining against the confines of his jeans. He looks up at her, black pupils fat inside blue irises. He raises one eyebrow at her as if asking her what she plans to do next.

By way of response, she reaches down and picks up his right hand from where it rests on the sofa next to them. She caresses his palm, gently, with her thumb.

She's worried, suddenly, that what she's about to do is going to freak him out. But she doesn't let that stop her. He needs to know, once and for all, how she feels about who, and what, he is. If her words over the years haven't convinced him, maybe her actions will.

Slowly, very slowly, she lifts Gendry's work-worn hand to her lips and begins pressing tiny kisses into his calloused palm. Along his wrist. Up and down the deep scar he got as a child from climbing that stupid chain-link fence while his foster parents weren't paying attention.

Then she takes his other hand and does the same to it.

Gendry's entire body stiffens as she tries to show him with her lips what her words all these years have apparently failed to do: that she loves his hands and everything they represent. That he, and his hands, are beautiful to her, just as they are.

To her great relief he doesn't pull away. He eyes her silently, and a little warily, but he doesn't make any move to stop her.

Only when she bends to take one of his fingers into her mouth does he protest.

"Wait, Arya – stop," he says. The edge of panic she hears in his voice breaks her heart. "Don't. Please. My fingernails – they're… they're so dirty, always, no matter _what_ I do, and …"

But he trails off midsentence, and he doesn't pull his hand away. She looks up at him with half-lidded eyes, and she sees that he's staring at her mouth, where the tip of his finger has disappeared.

She smiles a little at him and begins to suckle at his left index finger. She closes her eyes, and swirls her tongue around and around the tip the way that always gets him off in minutes when it's his cock, rather than his finger, between her lips.

His words of protest die in his throat and his cock twitches, hard, underneath her. She looks up at him again. His eyes are bulging slightly and his jaw is slack as he watches her essentially fellate his finger.

Taking his reaction as encouragement, Arya continues her ministrations, running the tip of her tongue up and down his length. She reaches her hand between their bodies and begins to stroke his erection through his work pants in time with each pass of her tongue. She squeezes a little, and he pulses in her hand.

"What… what are you doing?" he asks her, weakly, when she moves on to the next finger. He puts his free hand on one of her bare breasts, and he squeezes, rolling her erect nipple between two of his magnificently thick fingers like he'd done earlier. As she licks his finger up and down, she continues to stroke him, and he begins bucking a little into her hand.

"Showing you," she answers simply, her voice shakier than she wishes it were. She screws her eyes shut stay in order to stay focused. He must realize that that's what she's doing because as soon as she closes her eyes, he leans forward again, ignoring her earlier instructions to lean back, and begins suckling on one of her nipples in earnest.

Forcing herself to concentrate, Arya takes the index finger of Gendry's other hand into her mouth and mimics what she does when she goes down on him. She grips his wrist, hard, with both hands, and she bobs her head up and down, up and down, swirling her tongue wetly around and around his fingertip. A soft moan escapes him.

She can feel the vibrations from his mouth – still latched onto one of her nipples – rocket throughout her body. She lets out a quiet involuntary moan herself.

"Sh-sh-showing me what, exactly?" he rasps against her breast, his voice barely above a whisper. His free hand is still lavishing attention on her other breast and it feels good. _Very_ good. As Arya continues to nip, lick, and suck at his fingers one at a time, Arya starts rocking against his erection, unable to help herself.

He groans, loudly, and begins thrusting up into her to match her movements.

"I think you know what I'm trying to show you," she manages to grit out.

Gendry pulls back from her chest and looks into her eyes, pleading. "Tell me," he begs, panting now, as he tries to shimmy out of his pants – no small feat, as one of his hands is still in her mouth and she's sitting on top of him. "Please. I want to hear it."

"You're mine," she breathes. She takes some pity on him and helps him unfasten his belt buckle. She tugs down his pants and boxers, and his erect cock springs free, bobbing against the inside of her thigh.

"I'm yours," he repeats, clumsily hiking her skirt up to her waist and shoving the crotch of her cotton panties off to one side.

He thrusts himself inside her in one quick movement, her body slick with want.

"And… I want you, Gendry. I love you. Every… every _part_ of you… exactly as you… are…"

Without really intending to Arya lets his hand slip from her mouth. She begins to ride him slowly; now that he's inside her, and he's filling her up in the way that she always craves whenever he's near her, she can't hold herself back any longer. He bites his bottom lip and puts his hands on either side of her, guiding her movements. She can feel residual moisture from her mouth on one of her hips as he grips her. Thinking back to what she did to him to make his fingers wet like that makes her shudder, and she speeds up her movements.

It doesn't last very long. As they've gotten older, they've gotten better about taking their time with each other. But this started out such a rushed, unplanned thing that within minutes, Gendry begins to break apart, his entire body straining and shaking beneath her.

A moment later, he reaches down and begins to rub her swollen clit in tiny circles with two thick fingers. The callouses on his fingertips create an incredible friction against her, and her body is nothing but sensation.

When Gendry leans forward to once again take her breast into his mouth, it pushes her over the edge. With a hoarse cry, she shatters into a million brilliant pieces.

As Arya comes back to herself, he cradles her small body against his chest very gently. He holds her to him for a very long moment as their breathing slowly returns to normal.

"Hey," Gendry says, very quietly, after several minutes pass. He kisses her forehead. "I love you, Arya." He starts running his fingers through her hair very deliberately and methodically. With his other hand, he starts gently rubbing her back.

She hopes this means that he understands what she was just trying to show him.

She looks up at him and tries to scowl. From the amused look on his face, she guesses she hasn't quite managed it.

"Don't ever feel less than, or inadequate, around my family," she warns him. "We've been over that shit already, Gendry. We're past it." She shakes her head. "I mean… if I wanted a man with hands like a baby's ass, _that's_ the kind of man I would have gone after."

He gives her an arch look. "Oh really?" he asks. But one side of his mouth is quirked up in a half smile.

"Yes. Really."

He leans forward and gently kisses the tip of her nose.

"Ok," he whispers, closing his eyes and nuzzling her nose.

"But I want _you_, Gendry. Men with soft hands bore the shit out of me," she continues, whispering the words against his lips. "Because it means they lead boring lives behind desks and in offices." She reaches up with her hand and brushes away the sweaty fringe of black hair that's fallen across his forehead and into his blue eyes.

"And you've known since I was eleven years old that I hate being bored."

With that, Gendry starts to laugh.

"That's true." He grins down at her. "_Miss Stark_," he adds. She raises a hand to swat his shoulder but he grabs it before she makes contact, kissing her palm.

He holds her hand for a long moment before continuing.

"And your family…" he says, haltingly.

"… _loves_ you, Gendry," she finishes. Forcefully. "You know that."

He nods a little, looking sheepish. He bites his lip.

"All right," he says, finally. He takes a deep breath. "Arya I'm just… I'm sorry." He looks chagrined, and it hurts Arya's heart to see it. "From now on I'll be good. I promise."

Arya kisses his stubbled cheek once again and moves to get up off the sofa.

But to her surprise, he grabs her wrist and pulls her back down next to him.

"Can we still skip tonight's dinner, though?" Gendry asks. "I just… I mean, I'm fine. I'll be fine. I get what you're saying. But…"

Arya looks at him, one eyebrow raised. "But what?"

He grins wickedly at her, and her heart starts to race, despite the events of just a few moments ago. "_But_, I really want to show you what you did to me felt like. Right now."

Without another word, Gendry picks her up off the sofa and throws her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Squealing, she beats at his back with her fists.

He walks quickly to their bedroom and throws her down on their bed without ceremony, his eyes ravenous.

After a few minutes of Gendry's very focused persuasion, Arya breathlessly agrees to call her sister, later, and get them out of tonight's dinner.


End file.
